EDITORIAL - ‘The biggest crime group’

Not surprisingly, the Philippine National Police took offense over being described as “the biggest crime group” in the country. Because the description was provided by a PNP officer himself, based on questionable activities in which he participated, there are civilians who can believe the statement to be accurate

PNP officials have lamented the sweeping indictment by one of their own, Lt. Col. Jovie Espenido, who gave the description as he narrated the abuses committed in the campaign against illegal drugs that was carried out during the Duterte administration. Espenido, testifying before an inquiry being conducted by four committees of the House of Representatives, confirmed what many had suspected in the way the previous administration waged its bloody war on prohibited drugs.

Those implicated by Espenido have denied his story, which will still have to be validated in court. But in the meantime, the PNP is hurting from his accusations that police received rewards of about P20,000 for every person they killed on suspicion of involvement in illegal drug offenses. Quotas were set for the number of suspects killed, and many innocent people died as a result, Espenido claimed.

In 2016, he was the chief of police of Albuera town in Leyte when its mayor, Rolando Espinosa, was killed in an alleged shootout with a police team ostensibly serving a warrant to search the jail cell in Baybay City where the mayor was detained on drug charges. A year later, Espenido was the police chief in Ozamiz, Misamis Occidental when raiders shot dead 15 family members, security escorts and household staff of the Parojinog clan led by then city mayor Reynaldo Parojinog. Both Espinosa and Parojinog had been tagged as narco politicians by Rodrigo Duterte.

The picture now being put together by the so-called quad committee in the House on Duterte’s drug war validates the kinder approach being pursued by the Marcos administration in dealing with illegal drugs. The country continues to grapple with the drug problem, which the killing of thousands of suspects failed to eradicate. It is up to the Marcos administration to show that its approach is the better one.

This approach starts with a disciplined police force. Espenido might have exaggerated the extent of the rot in the PNP, but even its former chief Ronald dela Rosa has admitted that police abuses were committed in the conduct of the war on drugs. The best response to Espenido’s sweeping indictment is to sustain the housecleaning in the PNP, and to institutionalize measures to prevent further police abuses.